


Broken Hand

by clevebereave, splitcinnamon



Category: Whiplash (2014)
Genre: Anal Sex, Flashbacks, Hand Jobs, M/M, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-25 08:48:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3804223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clevebereave/pseuds/clevebereave, https://archiveofourown.org/users/splitcinnamon/pseuds/splitcinnamon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fletcher receives a call about Andrew's broken hand. Now he's gotta deal with it and all the baggage that comes attached.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Combined effort between myself and splitcinnamon. A couple of weeks were spent working on this. It was a lot of fun!
> 
> I gotta say, cinn did the brunt of the writing. I pretty much just did the porn, haha.
> 
> ______
> 
> Cinn here....just wanted to add that Clevebereave is super-amazing and wonderful. It was such a blast to share drafts and talk through the nuances of these characters with such a smart and creative person.

Interactions with Andrew required a good deal of discipline. The boy had few boundaries, though Fletcher explicitly told Andrew that text messages annoyed him. Since leaving for Massachusetts, Andrew sent them almost daily and, sometimes, in the middle of the night. Occasionally he even sent photographs of various Boston scenes: graffiti, or the river, records in a music shop, or some blurry image in a nightclub. Fletcher deleted all of these. 

Weekend nights were quite bad for this sort of thing. Andrew had no friends, and he did not do well with unstructured time. During the week he seemed to manage all right, with his classes and practice. It was the stretch between Friday night and Monday morning when his pathetic despair welled up and spilled over. When he was younger, back at Shaffer, Andrew would have spent those empty weekend hours holed up in a practice room. The free time had turned him to drinking, an easy distraction and effective waste of time, unless Jim was visiting for the weekend—in which case Andrew would be taken out for nice meals, to museums, and to the movies, and would remain sober until his father dropped him off at his dorm at night.

In the first few weeks of the semester, it had occurred to Fletcher that Andrew might need some type of antidepressant medication. When he had broached the subject with Andrew during the once-weekly phone call that Fletcher allowed him, though, Andrew exploded at the suggestion.

“I don’t need medicine! I know what I need! I need to come back to New York and play in your band again. You know that, you asshole!”

Fletcher had pictured Andrew in his dorm room, eyes wild, face flushed. As soon as the conversation ended, Andrew had probably smashed something in the room and then cried. His patterns were very predictable.

“If you talk to me like that again, I’m not answering your call next week, you ungrateful little fuck. And you’re not coming back to New York until you graduate. That’s what you agreed to, correct? Remember? When I sat down with you and your goddamn father? When I drove out to fucking Newark to talk to your dad about how an exceptional music school actually accepted your sorry ass?” 

“I know that’s what I agreed to,” Andrew had said, sadly. “It’s just really hard. That’s all.”

“Hard?” Fletcher parroted. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me, kid. What’s hard is keeping track of you like I’m your fucking babysitter. Are you ever going to grow up?”

“I’m sorry,” Andrew squeaked. “Sorry for bothering you again.”

Now it was late October. Andrew appeared to enjoy Boston no more now than he had in August, but the panic was gone from his voice when Fletcher spoke with him these past few weeks, replaced by a tone of exhausted capitulation and passivity. 

This evening felt different, though. Fletcher had gone out for a drink with a friend that night. His phone buzzed several times in the pocket of his jacket; each time, a message from Andrew. The boy was particularly incessant, but Fletcher ignored them. He returned to his apartment around 9pm with the pleasant intention of having a few glasses of wine and enjoying some Joey Baron and Ches Smith albums that he’d picked up on vinyl. 

Taking his wallet and phone from his jacket, he glanced at the message alerts—all from Andrew. There were several missed calls from Andrew, too. The phone buzzed again just as Fletcher was pouring himself some wine; figuring he might as well put a stop to this now, he answered.

“Goddamn it, Neiman…I don’t talk to you on Saturdays. You know that. Stop calling me.”

“No! Listen to me! Don’t hang up, please!” Andrew said in a frantic voice. “I just….I have to tell you…you have to come up here. I have to see you.”

“I’m not driving to Boston, Andrew. And you don’t call me on Saturday. Good night.” Fletcher smiled and sipped his wine.

“Wait!” Andrew begged. “Listen! Something terrible happened. I broke my hand!”

“What?” said Fletcher, setting his glass on the counter. He couldn’t possibly have heard that correctly.

“I broke my fucking hand. My right hand. In three places! Three broken bones…”

“How did this happen, Neiman?” Fletcher ran his hand over his face, trying to convince himself not to feel too much concern.

“I think…I think I hit someone. But I don’t remember. I think I blacked out.”

“You think you hit someone? What the hell is wrong with you?” Fletcher’s voice rose. He started to pace the kitchen. “Did this incident of extreme stupidity happen just now?”

“It was six days ago.” Andrew’s voice cracked a little. “I mean….the broken bones, the pain, I can deal with that. It’s just that I haven’t been able to play. And the last time I went this long without playing, it was after I got kicked out of Shaffer. That summer. Remember? And then you asked me to come play the JVC show. Do you remember?”

“Of course I remember, Andrew.” Fletcher looked at his wallet and keys on the counter.

“Sorry to bother you. I know you don’t like it when I call you,” Andrew said quietly. “It’s just that I miss you.”

Fletcher picked up his keys. “You know,” he said slowly, “it’s not very late. Maybe I’ll drive up there. Visit you for a little bit. Or maybe not. I just poured myself a glass of wine.” 

“Oh,” said Andrew.

“I was planning to relax tonight. Driving to Boston and listening to you complain would not be relaxing for me. So I’ll probably just stay here.”

“I understand,” said Andrew reluctantly.

“Good, then. Oh, and Andrew?”

“Yes?” said Andrew, with a touch of desperation in his voice.

“Since you’ve wasted this week’s phone call, don’t try to call me for another two weeks. Don’t try and email me, either. I’ll just delete them. You know that.”

“I know,” said Andrew. “I understand.”

“Alright, then. Good night!” 

“Good night, “ said Andrew.

Fletcher set his keys and the phone down. He leaned against the counter and sipped his wine slowly and thought about Andrew sitting alone in his room all night. Andrew’s devotion and neediness and flawed obedience—as if the boy really had to concentrate hard to follow Fletcher’s instructions—always touched him. It was almost intoxicating. 

Fletcher rinsed out the wine glass, placed it in the top rack of the dishwasher, picked up his jacket and his keys, switched off the kitchen light, and went out.  
*

Fletcher had students in the past who were, perhaps, more gifted musicians than Andrew, who had more of a natural touch with their playing. He’d also had some very creative students who’d developed careers as composers, a talent Andrew did not seem to possess. No one, of course, had ever come close to Andrew’s level of drive; drive wasn’t even the correct word for it. Andrew’s obsession with drumming was a psychosis. It was unhealthy, brutalizing, and freakish. But it was beautiful, and people loved it. When Andrew performed, he was a joy to see and hear. His entire body would light up; watching him, you could see that he was experiencing something that was transcendent, that somehow playing the drums was a more powerful and important act for him than it would be for someone else, someone who cared less. You could see and hear that about him, and that was a quality that Fletcher had never witnessed to such an extent in another musician.

Of course, then, when he was done with a set, Andrew would turn, breathless, wiping the sweat out of his eyes with his sleeve, and look around for Fletcher, nothing else taking his attention until he locked eyes with his mentor.

And this was the miracle, and the problem, that was Andrew. Andrew had been a problem for Fletcher from the start. His eyes and his face, for instance, were quite problematic. Fletcher could read every thought that Andrew had by noting the degrees of light in his eyes and the subtle expressions on the boy’s round face. A lifted chin, lowered eyes, the start of that slight smile: Fletcher could pick up energy from the open book of Andrew’s face from across a noisy room. Fletcher knew that this left Andrew quite vulnerable to him. He had to keep his guard up.

Andrew’s body was a problem, too. In the beginning, when he’d first seen Andrew playing alone at night in the Nassau band room—and in the first few weeks that Andrew struggled to play in the Studio band—Fletcher had actually been a bit repulsed by Andrew. The boy was quite tall, but you’d never really know it because he slouched. His clothes never fit him right. (Fletcher learned later that Andrew didn’t even buy his own clothes; Jim bought them for him.) He was often staring off into space or at the floor. It wasn’t until Fletcher discovered how Andrew reacted to him—to Fletcher’s most brazen threats, his outright violence—that the many little things about Andrew that bothered him became oddly appealing. It was like a taste of something sour that puts you off at first, but with time you somehow grow to crave it.

For instance, the lower part of Andrew’s face and neck, scattered with scars from a car accident in middle school. Once Fletcher noticed them, he would catch himself staring and imagining the story behind them. Old scars could be reopened. There was the way that Andrew walked and moved; he was lanky, long-limbed, but awkward. It seemed he’d never learned how to use his body. Even when he drummed—the single thing that he was born to do-- he appeared contorted and ridiculous. At times Fletcher wanted to reach out to Andrew and adjust his posture, arrange his arms and legs and correct all the clumsiness out of him. Worst of all, though, was the fact that Andrew had a slight plumpness about him, baby fat he’d never outgrown, a boyish softness.

Andrew was as quick to bruise as he was to blush; Fletcher learned this one evening when they were practicing alone in a rehearsal room at Carnegie Hall. The rest of the band had left and it was only the two of them. Andrew said or did something—or maybe he did nothing at all, honestly—that provoked Fletcher to pinch him—hard—in the soft flesh at the crook of his arm. For an instant, Fletcher lost almost all sense of control, and dug in hard with his fingernails, twisting. Andrew gasped, but said nothing, and Fletcher twisted harder, gritting his teeth. When he let go, Andrew fell forward, out of breath from the pain. Fletcher slapped him on the back of the neck and told him to get out: practice was over. The next day, right below where Andrew’s t-shirt sleeve ended, above his elbow, was a dark purple bruise. After noticing it, Fletcher didn’t look at or talk to Andrew for nearly two days, until the bruise had begun to fade away. 

Thinking about all this—with Andrew separated from him by a three hour drive—was one thing. Knowing that with each mile brought him closer to facing it nearly made Fletcher turn the car around more than once. But he didn’t turn around; he just drove. And then, more quickly than he’d anticipated, he arrived in Boston and parked the car on Andrew’s street.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things start to heat up a little here. This chapter was really fun to work between us.

Andrew answered his phone on the first ring. “I’m in front of your building,” Fletcher said. “Come and let me in.”

He’d been on Andrew’s street for a little bit actually, sitting in the car, considering the implications of coming to Andrew close to midnight simply because the boy was upset. This was the sort of thing that once done, could not be undone. Andrew was easily spoiled; toss any graciousness at him, and he’d expect it again and again.

When stopping to gas up the car and pick up a cup of coffee on the way out of New York, the cigarette display behind the cashier had caught Fletcher’s eye. He bought a pack of his old favorites, Marlboro Reds. He’d quit smoking when his wife was pregnant; she’d always hated cigarettes, and a baby was a convincing reason for him to quit. He did bum one or two occasionally after a performance or when his nerves were bothering him, but he hadn’t smoked heavily in a long time. Even after the divorce, he didn’t fall back into the old habit. Now he was startled to see that he’d burned through almost half the pack on the drive to Boston; his mouth tasted like smoke and his pulse raced. But here he was; might as well call Andrew and figure out how to deal with the fallout later.

And then, look—there was Andrew: pale skin, white t-shirt, like the clumsy apparition of an overgrown child in the doorway of his building. Some girls came up the steps, and Andrew lowered his head and apologized to them for being in their way. He held the door for them, but his eyes were on Fletcher, striding down the sidewalk. When the girls were in, Andrew let the door swing shut, and he hurried down the steps to his former teacher, his face glowing. 

“Hi!” Andrew gasped, grinning. Fletcher realized that the boy was out of breath; he was vibrating with a strange energy. “Holy shit,” Andrew said, “I’m so happy….I can’t believe you’re here.” He closed his eyes, and his eyelids flickered a bit. “I just can’t believe it!” 

Under the fluorescent lights of the building’s interior, Fletcher could see that the heavy cast on Andrew’s hand and forearm was already a bit grungy. There were shadows under his eyes, and he needed a haircut. 

“You don’t look well, Andrew,” Fletcher said as the young man guided him down the hall. 

“I’m not well, I guess,” he said, and shrugged, smiling a strange, sad smile that Fletcher had never seen before.

Andrew had a suite to himself at the quiet end of the corridor. The room was small and cramped and smelled of dirty laundry, greasy pizza boxes, and something like a backed-up shower drain. Fletcher found the room inordinately depressing; his stomach clenched the moment he set foot in it.

He looked about and said to Andrew, “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“That’s fine!” said Andrew, eagerly, trying to gather discarded clothing and textbooks from his desk chair and his bed with his left arm and dump them on the floor. “Just, uh, open the window….we’re not supposed to smoke inside.”

Fletcher shoved the window open as wide as possible; the fresh autumn air did relieve the sense of claustrophobia from the room a bit. 

Andrew said, excitedly, “I’m sorry the place is such a mess. I really didn’t think you would come. Um, do you want a drink? I have Pepsi. And beer. I think I have some vodka left…oh, wait!”

Fletcher raised an eyebrow, leaning to tap some ash from his cigarette out the window, watching Andrew pull open a desk drawer with his left hand (his right arm hung limp beside him, as though weighed down by the cast). He pulled a green bottle of scotch from the drawer and held it up.

“The first week I moved here, I thought, maybe you would come and visit me, and I wanted to have something nice for you! So, um….this is good, right? My uncle drinks it.”

“Glenlivet. Yeah, that’s fine.” Fletcher shrugged.

Andrew grinned. “Ok, um, I can’t open it…with one hand…”

Fletcher took the bottle from him and undid the seal. Andrew went to a corner of the room where he had some dishes stacked on top of a small microwave and fridge, and returned with a jam jar glass and a Berklee coffee mug. 

“They’re clean, I promise!” he said. Fletcher sighed and poured an ample amount into each.

Andrew took his mug of scotch and sat on his unmade bed, exhaling audibly. Fletcher tossed the end of his cigarette out the window and started to move around the room, surveying it, comparing Boston Andrew with New York Andrew and trying to assess the damage. 

There were no drumsticks in sight. Fletcher approached the desk, brushing aside papers and books, some empty soda cans, a beer bottle, headphones. He found an orange prescription bottle behind the screen of Andrew’s laptop.

“Is this for your hand?” he asked, lifting the bottle and inspecting the label: hydrocodone. Of course.

“Yeah,” Andrew said, and sipped his drink.

“You got this filled on Monday?”

“Yep.”

“So why’s it empty?”

Andrew shrugged. “I was really happy, for, like, three days. It was worth it.”

Fletcher snorted and tossed the bottle back on the desk. “You’re a fucking idiot.” A nauseating thought came over him. He glanced at Andrew on the bed: pasty, slouching, hollow-eyed. Fletcher took a long swallow from his own glass and said, “Did you break your hand on purpose, Andrew?”

Andrew suddenly became animated. “No, Fletcher, I swear, I would never do anything like that! Not being able to play…this is a nightmare. It was an accident, I fucking swear to God!”

“But you were drunk?”

“Yes, I was drunk. That’s true.”

Fletcher took the bottle from the desk and poured several fingers into his glass; Andrew held out his cup and, after a moment of hesitation, Fletcher refilled it as well.

Leaning against the desk, looking down at Andrew, Fletcher said, “You’ve been drinking too much. You need to be more careful.”

“Fuck you,” Andrew said quietly. “You don’t even try to understand how I feel.”

Fletcher rolled his eyes. “OK, Andrew, tell me: how do you feel? How does it feel to be a coddled little asshole who’s had everything handed to him and is still coasting on the glory of one fluke performance from nearly two years ago?” 

Andrew blinked, staring at the floor. “See,” he said quietly, “you don’t get it.” He lifted his cup and drained it greedily enough, without choking, that it was apparent he’d grown practiced at consuming hard liquor. He glanced up at Fletcher and started to talk, more quickly and with a tone of desperation. “Like, back when I was at Shaffer, my dad would say, ‘Give things time, you’ll get perspective.’ And I thought he meant that everything would get easier. But that’s not what he meant at all! It doesn’t get easier, it only gets worse! I mean, at Shaffer….everything was, like, clear. Like, I knew what I needed to do! I knew that I needed to be a great drummer. And I think I am!”

“I’m riveted, Neiman. This is the saga of the century.” Fletcher smirked and sipped his drink.

“You fucking asshole, listen to me! I’m good at drumming, but I don’t care. It’s not enough!”

Fletcher held out his hands in a gesture of concession. “So life is not as exciting as you thought it was going to be. So sad. You’re twenty-one years old, you’ve played Carnegie Hall, you’ve performed and recorded professionally, and you’ve been given a second chance at one of the best music schools in the country. What else could you possibly want? Because it really looks like you have everything lined up right now, and you’re just….shitting it away.”

The moment dragged. Andrew cleared the back of his throat. “Well,” Andrew said softly, “I want you.”

Silence. Fletcher drew in his breath, leaned his head back, not looking at Andrew; Andrew slouched forward more, dropping his arms between his knees and keeping his gaze flitting around everything but Fletcher. From the open window came the sound of drunken college students laughing in the street.

After a long pause, Andrew began to speak again, slowly. Dragging his eyes back up, he said, “Listen, I…I have very strong feelings for you. Like—“ his face was growing flustered—“desire. I guess. And…I was just starting to think, like, you’re older than my dad…so, like, um, you only have a limited time to, be, uh…around.” 

Fletcher groaned. The nausea was returning, as well as some dizziness, with each inept word Andrew spoke.

“So,” Andrew continued, still slowly and softly, but with a bit more confidence, “I just wanted to put it out there, and be clear. And I know that you’re not gay. But I really just want to be close to you. I want to be around you. Like, maybe I could come to your apartment, and I could, like, clean it, and I could cook for you, and do errands and things.” Andrew glanced up, his face red and gleaming with perspiration, “Basically, I can’t stop thinking about you. I’ll do anything you ask.”

Silence again. Fletcher poured more scotch in his glass and went to the window. His hands were trembling as he lit his cigarette, and he was startled when he turned and saw that Andrew had crawled across the bed to the side facing the window.

“May I have one, too?” Andrew asked, and Fletcher gave him the one he’d just lit, taking the opportunity to fiddle in the pack for another, fill the silence and prolong his answer.

“First of all,” said Fletcher, after a long pause spent staring out the window into the night, trying to forget that Andrew was sitting so close to him and watching his face so intently. “I’m in superb health. So that shit about my _dying_ is a bit dramatic. As for your cooking and cleaning for me: that could be tolerable, if you had any talent for it. But look at this room: it’s filthy! And I’ve only ever seen you eat junk food. So that idea is a no.”

Andrew nodded solemnly.

“And as for sex”—Andrew lifted his face; Fletcher shrugged. “—I like women.”

“Couldn’t you pretend I’m a woman?” Andrew asked, ridiculously.

“Do you have a vagina, Andrew?” Fletcher flicked the end of his cigarette out the window and took the half-finished one from Andrew’s fingers; the ashes had scattered over Andrew’s bare feet.

“Of course not!” Andrew said, scrunching up his face. “Fuck you!” he added after a moment’s consideration.

The absolute absurdity of the situation—being in this cramped and dirty room, with Andrew himself sitting there at his most pathetic: as flustered and sweaty as he ever was at the height of Fletcher’s abuses of him in Studio band—was somehow devastating and hysterical at once. Fletcher felt as if he had to speak very carefully, but the words that he said sounded unreal to him. They were things he’d never allowed himself to think of in any serious way, things that lay hidden and had faded with time, and that he’d certainly never anticipated speaking aloud to anyone, ever.

“Listen,” Fletcher started, looking down at Andrew. “I’ve fucked men before, but it was a long time ago. It was strange. It was not….fun. And I hurt them. It hurts a lot.”

“Well,” Andrew “I want you to hurt me. And I’ve never fucked anyone, or been fucked. So you don’t have to, uh worry…about me comparing you to anyone…I guess.”

A wave of deep, sick pity came over Fletcher. “Seriously, Neiman? You’re a virgin? You’re twenty-one!”

Andrew shrugged. “I used to go on dates, I guess. It just doesn’t seem to be worth the effort…”

Fletcher gestured toward Andrew’s crotch. “Can you not get it up?” 

“Yes!” Andrew said, emphatically. “I jerk off all the time! I just, um….I think about you yelling at me…and I just…feel really…um, aroused.”

Fletcher gritted his teeth and closed his eyes. It was too much—the smell of the room, the taste of cigarettes and scotch, the words that Andrew was saying—kept saying—and the pity he felt for Andrew. He felt seasick.

Looking around for his jacket, he said, quickly and with a tone of resolution, “This is disgusting. I’m leaving.”

“What?” cried Andrew, raising his voice. “No! You can’t go!” And then, with a gasp, he began to sob.

Fletcher watched as the red-faced and pitiful Andrew sobbed into his cast. He lifted his head up, watery and bloodshot eyes fixating on Fletcher. Trapping him. Frozen in place by the big eyes glued onto him. 

“I don't know what you're expecting from me,” Fletcher said it just above a whisper, speaking carefully.

“Stay,” Andrew begged. He dared reach out, grabbing the thinnest part of Fletcher's wrist and tugging lightly.

Fletcher snapped his arm back. “The fuck do you think this is, Andrew? Do you honestly think your pansy-ass blubbering has made me fall in love with you? If you do, you're seriously fucking deranged.”

“I don't care,” Andrew sniffed. He soaked up tears with his cast. “I'm not okay.”

“No shit.” Fletcher looked toward the door. It wouldn't have been very difficult to leave. Maybe Andrew would have clung to his leg on his way out, but he figured he still had it in him to shake the crazy little pup off.

He looked back at Andrew. As repulsive as the sight of the sobbing was, the even more repulsive pang of pity was snaking into forefront of his mind. It had lingered there throughout the evening and now there was no use denying it. The kid was scared shitless, fucking shaking and ghost-white, tears and snot spilling down his mug. 

As though in an attempt to dissuade himself from the inevitable, Fletcher said, “You’re pathetic. I’ve seen more dignified road kill in my time.”

And yet, slowly, very slowly, he reached out a hand. Andrew recoiled at first, but then leaned into the hand until Fletcher’s palm rested against Andrew's cheek. Fletcher felt his own mouth twist and tighten, the back of his mind reprimanding himself for giving into the boy's idiotic infatuation and tears. He thought he knew better than to give into a tantrum.

Andrew closed his eyes and sniffled loudly. His healthy hand pressed against the hand on his cheek. He stroked the wiry fingers, ran the tips along coarse knuckles back down to the forearm and up again. “Please,” he begged quietly, voice quivering. He repeated the tender motion.

The hand on Andrew's cheek slid down to the shoulder. Once Andrew opened his eyes, Fletcher nodded tersely and brought the hand down to Andrew's thigh. He pushed one apart until Andrew got the hint and spread his knees wide for Fletcher.

This was bad, but more than bad it was fucking stupid. That was the worst of it, how fucking stupid it was of Fletcher to be doing this; how fucking stupid it was of Andrew to let him. But every time he thought about pulling his hand back and ending the madness, Andrew's eyes would meet his. _Those eyes._

Fletcher popped the button on Andrew's jeans. He looked to the boy's face, saw Andrew licking his mouth and eyeing Fletcher with a hungry desperation. The healthy hand had now gripped tightly around Fletcher's forearm, digging almost painfully into Fletcher's skin as the arm was pulled closer to the boy's crotch.

Even under the influence and miserable, Andrew still managed to be half-hard when Fletcher's hand enveloped Andrew's needy cock. 

“There’s some hand lotion….on the nightstand…” Andrew said quietly, breathlessly. 

“Do you really want me to let go?” The boy was already bucking feverishly into the hand while Fletcher pumped steadily.

“No!” Andrew gasped. “Don’t stop.”

The more he watched Andrew's face contort from the cold despair into warm pleasure, the more Fletcher's thoughts silenced themselves and shifted to focus on the task at hand. The more he allowed himself to want it. He had Andrew's body thrashing around him, the boy's eyes peeking out under the lids just to stare at Fletcher. The sobbing had stopped, though the face had become much more flushed.

Fletcher had forgotten just how strong Andrew's arms were. The healthy hand found its way onto a black collar and pulled Fletcher hard into an awkward, sloppy kiss. Andrew pulled back before Fletcher got the chance to push him. Still—the force of the pulling, the brazenness of it, the smell of Andrew’s skin, his startling and hungry kiss—was almost overwhelming. Fletcher’s own cock hardened. The thought of Andrew seeing the shape of Fletcher’s erection in his slacks sent another wave of that strange nausea over him, something to turn away from logically even as some animal instinct in him drew him closer and closer. 

With a few dramatic thrusts, Andrew came all over Fletcher's hand. He panted as he came down from orgasm, staring placidly as Fletcher took his hand off of his shrinking cock. He glanced back up at Fletcher's face, lips parted and eyes as wide as ever. The boy was beautiful in his unabashed pleasure and vulnerability. Fletcher somehow knew that he would never forget the sight of Andrew, hair damp with sweat, sitting on that bed, overcome, exhausted and lovely: _all for him,_ if Fletcher wanted it.

Fletcher eyed his semen-coated hand for a moment before sighing. He made his way over to the sink and turned the tap on, running his hand under cold water. He shook his head and added, “I'm too old for this shit. Get your ass in bed and get some sleep.”

Andrew obeyed, sliding his jeans off onto the floor and gathering the rumpled sheets around him. Fletcher poured out the contents of Andrew’s coffee mug and refilled it with water from the tap. He went to the bed, saying, “Drink this.” 

Andrew looked up at him as he drank. “Please don’t go,” he said.

“I’m not going to go yet. I just need to think, Andrew.”

“Do you want to talk?” Andrew asked, handing the mug back.

“Absolutely not. Your talking is counter-conducive to my thinking. Just…shut up and go to sleep, alright?” Fletcher reached out and stroked the boy’s hair for a moment, and then withdrew his hand. He went to the desk lamp and shut it off. In the half-light coming from the streetlamps, he watched Andrew stretch out under his blanket and arrange the pillows around his head.

“Fletcher….” Andrew said softly, from the bed.

“Didn’t I just tell you not to talk?” Fletcher dragged the desk chair over to the window and sat down with the weapons he’d use to tackle the ghosts of his past; whiskey and cigarettes. For the first time in a long time, past events that he’d tried to forget seemed salient. It was painful and humiliating to bring up those old memories.

He stared out the window, focused on the sway of a tree planted along the sidewalk. Colored leaves were being swept along by the relentless force of the wind. The corners of his mouth picked up at the sight despite himself. He glanced back at Andrew, the boy still and quiet. For the sake of the two of them, it was time to reflect on repressed memories.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo. I pretty much wrote the majority of this one. It was pretty hard trying to capture a younger Fletcher, but a blast to write.
> 
> The OC is all cinn's. I actually learned a thing or two from her here, haha.
> 
> ___________

Despair had a lot of faces, though Fletcher had known them all very well by the time he was in his forties. He knew how to recognize it after he'd seen his student's faces darken with horror and hopelessness every time he tried to work past their mediocrity.

The problem was he didn't expect to look in the mirror and see that despair in himself. The fucking bitch, it wasn't enough that she took half of what was his. It wasn't enough that she took their daughter. He looked in that mirror, saw that despair and the taste of humiliation soured on his tongue. He wasn't even allowed his pride. 

He left her the house, moved into an apartment that looked as empty as he felt. He wasn't the type to drink to excess, but he christened the first night there with such an occasion. He passed out on the air mattress, but at least managed to come to in time for the one-on-one session he had with the studio band's core drummer the following Saturday afternoon.

His head still pounded in the practice room, nausea routed deep in the stomach and he wasn't so sure if that was the hangover or the self-loathing for letting something get that deep under his skin to begin with.

Fletcher remembered few things about the kid—skinny body, blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail-- but most of all Fletcher remembered the kid’s saucer-eyed fear aimed at him. 

There was no greeting that session, no pretense of him actually pretending to give a shit about the kid even showing up.

Fletcher cleared his throat. “Riptide, from the top. You get a measure.” He raised his hand, counted one measure before the kid launched into drumming. 

The kid went off a beat. He panicked suddenly, missed a series of hits trying to frantically align himself with the tempo before Fletcher closed his hand. The latter hadn’t even spoken. He chose to clap the previous count for the second attempt. There was a third attempt, and then a fourth before Fletcher closed his hand into another fist to signify the kid to stop playing.

It was then, he finally spoke. “Did you grow up hearing people tell you that you had talent?” Fletcher waited for the kid to nod sheepishly. “They knew jack shit. You better have a good reason for playing so badly.”

Cautiously, the kid shrugged. His posture faltered, shrinking within himself. “I don’t know, I’m sorry,” he whined.

Fletcher nodded slowly. “Sorry, is that right?” He took a moment, exhaled and folded his arms. “You think ‘sorry’ makes up for me being here on a fucking Saturday only to hear you play like you’ve got Parkinson’s?”

“No,” The kid stammered. He fixed his gaze onto his own feet.

The head ache was going strong, and the bullshit had him seeing red. He felt the boil of rage burn through his body and he couldn’t stop himself from raising his voice if he tried. “Look at me when I’m talking to you, you useless piece of shit.”  


The kid raised his head. His shoulders sank, however, and he continued to refuse to look Fletcher in the eye.

“Tell me you’re not fucking scared of me,” Fletcher accused. Standing closely to the student, he folded his arms and stared down at the top of the kid’s head. “You’re shaking in your fucking boots, kid.”

“I’m not scared,” the kid protested weakly and hunched forward further. 

Fletcher was just barely able to hear the kid’s gulp. “If you're not fucking scared of me, then look me in the goddamn eye.” It wasn't the first time Fletcher raised a hand to a student, but the man knew this had nothing to do with the kid's awful output. He backhanded the kid, screaming insults aimed at his ex-wife before slapping the kid again.

The kid had put his arms up in front of his face, a paltry attempt at defending himself while he was being hit and screamed at. The display of passivity absolutely disgusted Fletcher.

Throat hoarse from yelling, Fletcher's dry throat ached at every word. The muscles on his face hurt with how intensely he grimaced. The kid was trembling, wide-eyes glued onto Fletcher.

Fletcher didn't have it in him to apologize. He stepped away from the kid, stood hunched over with hands placed above his bended knees as he caught his breath. “Fuck,” Fletcher hissed. “Fuck it.” He wiped away spit that landed on his chin after it flew out while he screamed. 

“We're done here today.” Fletcher hadn't even looked at the kid as he informed him. “Go home.”

But the kid still sat there, shaking like a leaf with a blank look on his stupid fucking face. Fletcher could feel the anger and frustration begin to boil over again.

“What the fuck are you still sitting there for?”

“Uh,” the kid stammered. He put his hands up once Fletcher bounded toward him, but instead of slapping him again the man had gripped the kid's face in his tightly in his hand.

“Today is not the day,” Fletcher warned. His head throbbed as he said it.

The kid gulped audibly, shaking hand coming up and loosely looping around Fletcher's wrist. He craned his head up at the man. 

The more Fletcher dealt with the situation, the more exhausted he felt. “Why are you still here?”

“Because,” the kid managed frightfully. “You're not okay right now.” 

Fletcher knew the many faces of despair, but apparently so did the kid with the poor grasp on counter-rhythms. “What the fuck do you know?” But the pretense didn’t matter, the illusion was shattered. If he wasn’t so exhausted he would at least been able to counter that pity with rage, saved face by instilling fear.

He stared at the face held by his hand, his grip so tight on the cheeks that the kid’s lips puffed out. Here was a child who had his life ahead of him, who hadn’t put all of his stock in one person, who hadn’t had life fall into disarray around him. A carte blanche. An innocent with wide, genuine eyes. 

Despair and envy did not pair well.

He brought his mouth down on the kid, pulling him up by the collar of his shirt. A snare drum was knocked over, but he couldn’t even register when his thoughts screamed out with starved jealousy, with bizarre convictions that somehow there was innocence to be gained from the desperate act.

The kid’s loose clothing made it easy to undress him. He guided the kid onto the ground and pulled the unbuttoned flannel shirt off, along with the faded t-shirt beneath. He pulled ratty jeans down over skinny legs, yanking off the kid’s sneakers and tossing them aside.

Fletcher stared down, the kid all angles and lines. Nothing like the body he had become familiar with, but that was a good thing. It urged him onward, had him tearing off his own clothes to try and recapture a simpler time, to hold onto it using the strength of his entire body.

He remembered the kid being receptive, albeit nervous. He shucked off his own briefs and presented himself to Fletcher, laying on his back with his legs spread wide and his cock perked up so that it bounced eagerly on his stomach. His hands shook, lip quivered, but he bit the bottom lip and his vision kept glancing between Fletcher’s arousal and Fletcher’s face.

Fletcher got on his knees and spat into his hand, rubbing spit all over his prick. He grabbed the pair of thin ankles and placed them over his shoulders, pulling up the kid’s body so his ass was up in the air for easier access. One hand placed on the lower part of the kid’s back, he guided the head of his cock to the hole and slowly pushed his way in.

There was the resistance, the tight and hot feeling of his dick being constricted and enveloped, bringing a welcome reprieve of his thoughts. He pushed in deeper and felt his head become lighter looking at the youthful face underneath him gasping, the kid groping around the floor for something to keep him grounded.

The ankles hooked around the back of his neck. Fletcher thrust harder, driving his cock in as the surge of thoughtless sensation and stimulation convulsed through his body. Every roll of his hips brought him back another day until he was convinced he was in his twenties fucking some hot, young nobody hard and fast.

He gripped the bony hips of the body under him and pulled the kid into him, burying himself to the hilt. Yet he was still disappointed their bodies limited them from coming together any closer, limited from going any deeper. He came with a growl, prick so sensitive during that his breath grew rapid and staccato. He hung over the boy, slowly letting up on his hold of the hips as he spent himself into the youth.

Only when he was done was he really able to understand what had just occurred. His body was hot and sticky. He looked down as he grew flaccid, cum beginning to dry on the head of his cock. He saw the kid under him, writhing around with the small smile of someone who was freshly fucked. He looked at the red marks on the hips, where nails and fingers had dug in. He looked at the distended hole, leaking pink with the mixture of semen and blood. He looked back at the student still staring at him with those big goddamn eyes.

Silently, Fletcher got to his feet. A wild haze of disbelief kept him occupied enough to quickly get himself dressed, but the moment he felt a hand tugging lightly at the thinnest part of his wrist he grabbed the kid and threw him into the drum set. After the crash of percussion settled, the kid groaned out in pain and called for Fletcher.

“If word gets out,” Fletcher began, vitriol thick in his voice. “I will fucking kill you.” For a moment, he meant it. He actually thought about taking the fallen snare drum and bashing the kid’s skull in, but the thoughts dissipated after he made a beeline to the door and stepped out into the cool night air.

It was a long walk back. Shaffer was a train ride away, but he couldn’t stand the thought of his being seen at his weakest by so many people. He walked home, thought about his ex-wife, the empty apartment he was walking back to and the student he had made a horrible mistake with.

There were many faces of despair, but he was certain he wore one more tragic and horrific than one he had ever caused before. He had never felt so goddamn alone.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the saga ends. Really, gotta thank cinn a hundred thousand times over for having the opportunity to work on this together. It was a really enjoyable experience and I'm so happy with the end result.

There was another memory of the blond kid, a faint memory beneath the shame that accompanied recollections of that Saturday twenty years ago. The kid had every right to leave the band, to file a grievance with Shaffer’s administration, perhaps even to sue. But he showed up the following Monday for practice, quietly sitting behind the kit and ready to play.

After practice, after the other members of the band had left, the kid lingered in the doorway of Fletcher’s office. Fletcher remembered that the kid’s hair was loose of its typical ponytail and hung over his eyes. 

“What the fuck do you want?” Fletcher said, trying not to look up from the charts on his desk.

The kid brushed his hair back from his forehead and said, quietly, “I just wanted to see how you were doing…”

Fletcher closed his eyes tight, trying to keep his pulse low, but it was no use. He grabbed a metronome from the shelf behind his desk and threw it at the kid, yelling, “Get the hell out of my sight, you pathetic piece of shit…”

The kid moved quickly to dodge the metronome, which crashed into the wall, leaving a dent that remained for the rest of Fletcher’s time at Shaffer, eventually to be hidden behind a Dizzy Gillespie poster. Then, after a very brief hesitation, the kid left without a word.

In the weeks that followed, Fletcher went out of his way to spend time alone. He avoided his old friends and continued to walk rather than take the subway. Being around others seemed only to remind him of the family he’d lost, of the empty apartment he returned to each night. And though he had many students who seemed to respect him and appreciate his methods, he never again had a student who inquired into his wellbeing with the selflessness of that blond kid in the mid 1990s.

It took nearly a year for the divorce to become official. Fletcher received no custody or visitation rights with his daughter. Though she did call him from time to time during the first few months of his separation from her mother. The calls stopped within the first year. 

He learned not to feel sorry for himself, though. But one night, before he had fully learned this lesson, he found a framed picture of the three of them, as a family, at the bottom of a cardboard box of various items he’d never unpacked after moving. He smiled sadly, looking at it, and set it out on his desk, where it stayed for years to come.  
*

 

Fletcher finished his drink and tossed the butt of his last cigarette out the window. He stood up, slid off his shirt, undid his belt, and removed his slacks. He held the slacks together at the cuffs and folded them carefully over the back of the chair, to preserve the crease.

He went to the bed and nudged at Andrew’s shoulder. “Move over,” he said quietly, with another gentle push.

“What?” said Andrew sleepily. 

“I said move over…and take off your shirt. I want to feel your skin.” 

Andrew sat up slowly and obliged. With a sigh and a bit of reticence, Fletcher put his arms around the boy and held him against his chest. They stretched out on the narrow bed together, Andrew half-lying over Fletcher’s body, his head on Fletcher’s shoulder. Fletcher slowly ran his palms up and down Andrew’s back and neck and through his hair. He moved his fingers gently over a wide skin-graft scar on Andrew’s shoulder; a vestige from the car accident, Fletcher assumed. He considered how much pain the accident must have caused Andrew at such a young age, and, momentarily, admired him for it. 

Andrew moved his right hand—awkwardly, in its cast—over Fletcher’s thigh, but Fletcher moved the hand away.

“Don’t touch me,” he said.

“But…” said Andrew.

“Don’t talk. Don’t do anything. Just…go back to sleep.” 

Andrew surrendered his weight to the bed and to Fletcher, and the older man continued to caress the warm skin of Andrew’s back, his bare arms and his curls until they both settled into sleep.  
*

Fletcher woke up in the morning to the sound of a light rain through the open window. He pushed Andrew’s body off of his own, stood up, closed the window, and went into the bathroom. He brushed his teeth with Andrew’s toothbrush, hoping to remove the taste of cigarettes from his mouth, and inspected the shower drain, which was, as he’d suspected, clogged.

He went back to the bed, where Andrew was sprawled on his stomach, and slapped the boy’s ass. “Wake up!” he demanded. 

Andrew sat up in the bed, rubbed his eyes, and then pressed back against the pillows, watching attentively as Fletcher dressed. Fletcher knew he looked good; he’d learned long ago that a moderate amount of weightlifting and low body fat made for an impressive combination. It was a shame how few people seemed capable of basic physical discipline; it really wasn’t that difficult.

“You know,” Fletcher said, “You need to call the housing office…or whatever…and have them come and fix your shower. And, your bed—“

“My bed?” Andrew looked around at the disheveled bedding and pillows.

“Yeah, your bed. It’s rank. When was the last time you washed your sheets?”

“Umm….” Andrew’s forehead furrowed in thought. “I guess….never. I just don’t think about it. My dad always did that at home.” 

Fletcher sat down in the desk chair, exasperated. “You know what? Let’s make a list. Get some paper.”

“Can I make a list in my phone?” Andrew reached for his jeans on the floor and pulled out his phone.

“Sure, whatever. First thing: wash your damn sheets. Next: call and get your shower drain fixed.”

“Okay,” said Andrew, quickly typing into phone with the thumb of his left hand.

“You might as well add ‘clean the fucking room’ to the list, too. Now get up! I don’t want to hang around here all day! I have shit to do. What’s your typical breakfast protocol?”

Andrew set aside the phone and said, thoughtfully, “When I’m up this early, I usually get doughnuts. But there’s also a diner nearby. My dad likes it.”

“I don’t eat doughnuts, Andrew. Come on, get dressed; let’s go out.”

Smiling, Andrew climbed out of the bed, pulled on the previous day’s jeans and dug a plaid shirt out of what Fletcher hoped was a laundry basket full of clean clothes that the young man had simply neglected to put away.

“Hold on,” said Fletcher, as he was pulling on his jacket. “Has anyone ever told you that you slouch?”

“Um, yeah. My dad’s mentioned it.”

Fletcher put his hands on Andrew’s shoulders and pushed back a bit, and then reached one hand around to press between the boy’s shoulder blades while the other hand pressed on his chest. 

“Alright, how’s that?” Fletcher asked.

“I feel taller,” Andrew remarked.

“Yeah. Well, it’s not your shoulders that are doing that; it’s your core. You start building up your abdominal muscles, and your posture will be a lot better. You should do sit-ups every day.”

They left the room and started to walk down the corridor and out into the drizzly street. “Um,” Andrew said, doubtfully. “How many do I have to do?”

“Hm,” Fletcher grunted. He spared a quiet moment to give Andrew a once-over before nodding slightly and adding, “A hundred.”

“Seriously? A hundred sit-ups?” Fletcher couldn’t help but smirk at Andrew’s puzzled expression. “A hundred sounds like a lot.”

“It is not unreasonable for a healthy twenty-one year old man to be able to do a hundred sit-ups. If it’s hard for you, you can start with fifty. But the next time I’m up here, you should be able to do a hundred. In fact, put that on your list.”

Andrew furiously typed into his phone as they walked along, balancing the phone on his cast and typing with this left thumb.

Over breakfast, Fletcher said, “Things are going to be different now. I thought about it last night.” He took a sip of black coffee. “From now on, I will call you instead of your calling me.”

“Oh,” said Andrew, with a bit of disappointment.

“It will be better that way. Listen….what’s your class schedule like?”

“Um, I have jazz arrangement on Monday and Wednesday, music theory on Tuesday night…”

“You know what? Just…put it in my phone.” Fletcher slid his phone across the table to Andrew.

“You want me to put my schedule in your phone?” 

“Yeah. That way I’ll always know where you are…or at least where you’re supposed to be.”

Andrew nodded and looked down at Fletcher’s phone, typing one-handed into the calendar.

The waiter brought their food. Andrew finished entering his schedule into Fletcher’s phone, passed the phone back, and attempted to spread butter and pour syrup all over his plate of French toast and sausage using his left hand.

“I can feel my cholesterol level go up just looking at that,” Fletcher said, gesturing with his fork before taking a bite of his egg white omelet.

“I don’t think about cholesterol. Because I’m not old,” Andrew said with a grin, and Fletcher kicked his shin hard under the table. The boy winced and dropped his eyes, but remained smiling.

“So, as I was saying…I’ll call you once or twice a week, at my discretion. If I call you, and you’re out at some bar, or trashed, or high, that’s it. We’re off.”

“We’re off….” Andrew looked confused. “So….um….this is a…thing?”

“Well,” Fletcher said, cautiously. “It’s something.” He sat back in the booth, holding his coffee mug and trying to ignore the strange twinge of repulsion mixed with excitement that seemed to follow every interaction between the two of them.

“Anyhow,” he continued, after a moment. “Read me your list again.

Andrew swallowed his bite of French toast and tapped at his phone. “Wash sheets, call about the shower, clean room, do a hundred sit-ups—“

“Every day,” interjected Fletcher.

“—a hundred sit-ups every day.”

“Very good…and another thing…you know, it’s a lot of effort for me to come up here. I have to take time out of my schedule, and I’m sure as hell not spending another night in your dorm room. Never again. So we’re going to have to stay in a hotel, and it’s just a lot of work on my part. So when I come to visit you, I’m going to expect a lot from you. And you’re going to have to provide it. Even if it’s unpleasant. Even if it hurts.”

“I understand,” Andrew said, nodding. He seemed more resolute in this than at any other point in the conversation, and that made Fletcher smile.

Back at Fletcher’s car, Andrew glanced once again over the list on his phone. “This seems like a lot of things I’m supposed to do. I mean, the cleaning and the laundry, I guess that’s okay. The exercise seems…extreme. And then, if I’m not supposed to be out or drunk when you call, and you’re going to call at any time I’m not in class….then, um, I guess that means I’m never supposed to go out or get wasted. I’m just supposed to stay in, all the time.”

“Right,” Fletcher said, unlocking his car door and climbing in. He looked up at Andrew and clasped the boy’s good hand tightly, turning it in his own hand to press and twist his fingernails in one of Andrew’s half-healed blisters. “When I’m up here with you, then we’ll get you wasted. How does that sound?”

“That sounds fair,” said Andrew, beaming simultaneously as he gasped at the pain. Fletcher released his grip on the boy’s hand. A drop of blood ran down Andrew’s palm.

Fletcher smiled. “If you really want me to fuck you, Andrew, you’re going to have to earn it.”

Andrew lowered his face, blushing, “I want to earn it.” He sucked in a breath, lifted his head up and looked Fletcher in the eye. “I will earn it.”

Fletcher nodded, gestured for Andrew to shut the car door, and drove off. Andrew went upstairs to start his laundry, clean his room, and obediently wait for Fletcher’s call.


End file.
